Solitude Without Decadence

You’re sitting at the back of the bus. Quiet. You’re staring out the window, past your distorted reflection, which stares back blankly. Everything you know is wrong, you think, and everything you’ve done hasn’t been enough to avoid this moment.
The bus slowly leaves Galway town. The rise and fall of the engine matching the rise and fall in your chest. Your panic intensifying and releasing with the ridiculous and the sublime of the thoughts in your head. Your confusion. Your loss. Your guilt. Your expectation. From Galway to Dublin.
You notice everyone has chosen to sit alone. Silence but for the odd muffled cough and uncomfortable rearrangement in their seats. Books being read, pages turning. Outside, the industry and population of the town eventually disintegrates into sparse suburbs with large gardens and finally barren open fields.
You think about if someone were to sit down beside you and try to talk, whether you’d indulge them in conversation. Would the effort prove too much to take the headphones from your ears. Could you do with only the music of their voice? But there are no stops immediately ahead and so the notion is a passing one. You change your music and relent to the unfolding miles of solitude.

When he visited just before Christmas and took you out for dinner in an expensive restaurant, your father spoke of the importance of this stage in your life. The possibilities of the age you were at. The age of majority.
“18. The age of majority,” he said looking around the small dining room of the country-kitchen themed restaurant.
“I’ve heard that one already. Still not sure what it means,” you answered, watching his eyes but not following his gaze.
“You like it up here, away from the big smoke?” he continued, not hearing your response from his previous question. Not interested. Not important.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it. I’m here now and for four years it’s pretty much the long haul so I’ll get used to it,” was your non-committal answer. You’d gotten very good at giving answers that don’t say yes and mask a no. Hoping for a head-turn, eye-contact or some feigned attempt at reassurance. But there was nothing.
“You like the people. Your classes?” again his eyes were wandering the room. Watching the waitresses. The beautiful women with old men. You wondered what he was thinking and why he had really come.
“They’re fine. Getting along. No big problems, no big news,” you replied, leaning back now as your food was placed in front of you. You noticed your father sneak a look down the top of the waitress when she served him. Once she had gone and you had begun to eat, hoping to get this meeting over with, you noticed he was now looking directly at you. He was ready to talk. He was here for something.
“I’m thinking of moving away. Probably Canada,” you continued to eat. Instantly erecting a front of nonchalance. You wanted to show that you could handle such revelations, that you didn’t need anyone. That you were a man.
“Interesting,” was all that would come out.
“How would you feel about that?” he hadn’t looked at you like this since the last time you had eaten together. The last time he wanted to talk.
“I’m OK with it I think. We have family in Vancouver and you’ve been there enough times so it had crossed my mind before now,” it hadn’t.
“Obviously you could come over and visit and I’d be back across a few times a year,” he was still staring at you for a show of how you felt. It was you now who was staring around the room.
“Oh yeah of course,” was all that would come out.
“But it won’t be for a while yet. I still have things to tie up here and it’s still just an idea,” he was trying to reassure you now. You didn’t want reassurance. You didn’t know what you wanted. You were concentrating on your dinner. Your mind was blank. You knew you should feel something but there was just nothing. Emptiness. You were hungry.
“I haven’t told your sisters yet. I wanted to see how you felt about it first,” he was eating now, seemingly at ease again. This time you did have something to say. And he had an answer. He avoided your eyes again to give it.
“Have you said anything to Mum?”
“No.”
Everyone needs someone.

The bus stops in the middle of a town and the driver says you’ve got a few minutes for a toilet break or to run into a shop. You get off the bus and smoke a joint you rolled earlier. As the drug wraps around your senses you watch your fellow passengers find a newsagent or a fast-food restaurant. Going about their business and making little decisions. No one seems to know each other and none converse.
You cup your joint in your hand and sit away from the bus to ring your mother. You’re not surprised she doesn’t pick up until the tenth ring. She sounds half asleep or stoned. You decide to yourself that it could be both.
“How you getting on?” you ask, knowing the answer.
“Fine. Everything’s all set now I think,” she slightly slurs in response.
“How are the girls coping?” again, already knowing the answer. Your sisters would be fine. They were young enough to still forget. Young enough to relearn.
“I think they’re fine. You’re aunt has them. She offered and I thought it was a good idea,” you think so too.
“How’s your new hubby been through all this. Still there I hope,” you didn’t mean this to sound petulant but that’s how it comes out. She doesn’t hear the tone though.
“He’s been fine. He’s planning a holiday for us once this is all over. He thinks it’d be good to get away. Says it should help the mourning,” she’s definitely stoned.
“Oh sure it will. You can count me out though. I’ve got to be back for classes,” this time you let your anger flow through your voice. This time she hears it.
“He’s only trying to help, he’d like to get to know you better, he said this to me,” you watch the smoke from your joint as she‘s talking. Being born in a perfect stream from the cherry of light at the tip of the cone and then twisting and scrambling to stay together as the wind manipulates it. Forces change everything.
People smile at you as they board the bus again. You smile back and make well-trained pleasantries. She’s waking up now as she talks about your stepfather and how he’s saddened too by the sudden death of your real father. You’re so stoned now that you’re afraid of laughing. Laughing or crying. You’re confused again. You move to end the conversation swiftly. You interrupt your mother mid-sentence. Anger comes out.
“The bus is leaving again here so I have to go. Tell the girls I said hi. Tell the step-dad to fuck off. I’m not doing the eulogy by the way. Bye,” and you hang up. You never feel guilt for these outbursts anymore. And the bus really was boarding.
You do as you’re told when the bus driver returns and says all aboard in a very serious tone as though he were a train driver. You wonder which he thinks the more important profession and smile as you pass him.
The bus, moving again, passes out of the town and you realise you never got the name. That you never even thought of it and that now you may never know you were briefly in that town, at this point in your life, having that conversation with your mother, in whatever part of Ireland, if someone were to ask you some day. The thought is a fleeting one as the bus again moves through farmland. Giant bales of hay wrapped in black plastic scattered amongst dark green. A silent tractor in the corner of one field. A disused, rusted barn in another. The sun is burning the clouds red as it falls from the sky and you’re glad for the joint you smoked because now your eyelids fall too and you don’t have to think.

You’re sitting in the principals office in your secondary school waiting for your parents to come in for a meeting about your attendance. It’s been four weeks since you’ve even set foot in this school. The office is empty except for you and the principal who is sitting opposite you with his hands spread on the table. He is pointing at a piece of paper. It’s silent but for the off sequence ticks of numerous clocks that are spread throughout the office and set between the two of you. The office is circular. Your principle is staring at you but his face is out of focus. When you try to focus on the walls of the office they blur too. You’re aware this is a dream even as you sit in anticipation of your parents. You’ve had this dream many times before. You’re thinking to yourself of what is to come next. Your parents will enter, their faces unfocused as well. There will be talking. A generic demeaning of your person will pass between the elder subjects. You will cry. You will apologise. You will feel the anger ganged upon you. There will be a punishment vended and you will leave with your parents. That you know this is a dream and what will happen is a comfort. But this time your parents never show and so the ominous feeling of impending doom grows. In this dream you’re only 15 and you feel the immaturity inherent in that youth. Your principal is tapping his finger now, drawing your attention again to the piece of paper. You hear the clocks ticking. Outside you hear building work. Hammers banging. The piece of paper is becoming clearer. You look around at the clocks that are ticking. Then outside to the hammers banging. And again to the finger tapping. On the piece of paper is the word ‘principal’. Somewhere outside the office, a door slams. And the clocks are ticking. The office seems smaller. Outside the hammers are banging. And the finger tapping. You look at the word on the piece of paper and notice that ‘pal’ is underlined. A door slams. You look at your principal but his face is still blurred. And the clocks are ticking. And the finger tapping. And the hammers banging. And the door slamming. And the office seems smaller. And the word principal, with pal underlined. And the finger tapping…
You wake up to the tap on the shoulder from a girl hoping to take the seat beside you, but the suit you’re going to wear to the funeral is hanging there so you mutter some obliging apology incoherently to which your voice cracks, then smile in slight embarrassment and she takes the seat directly behind you. You’re faintly aware that this is the closest you’ve been to a woman your own age in weeks since you haven’t been attending your classes, only reading the books prescribed. She’s pretty, you notice in your quick analytic glance before she disappears from your view, with a smile more in her eyes than across her mouth. The smell of her sweet perfume fills your head as she sits down and it’s only then that you notice the bus had stopped for more passengers. You slept through the second stop. It is night now and the moon is full providing a comforting, somewhat nostalgic light. Her aroma is swirling around you. At the front of the bus you notice the red blinking of the digital clock. It has not been set. There is no tick.

The thrum of the engine is louder now and when you look out the window you realise you’re on the motorway. The bus is travelling faster and is surrounded by more cars. The rapidly passing streetlights outside cause a fluorescent flash to light up the dark metal cocoon every few seconds. You watch the lights streaming by and stare down the straight distant highway at the miles to come.
Though not alone you feel lonely. You consider trying to strike up a conversation with the girl behind you but your cowardice takes over so you open the book you‘re reading for college. You find the main character in the book relatable; his troubles and self-indulgence. You’re reminded of your own trips to a therapist when you read of it. The overhead reading light you turn on brings the memory back further. You’ve seen this type of light before. Its dead functionality. Its lack of exploding brightness.

“Why don‘t you tell me a little about yourself,” the question was a cliché. You wondered would seeing a therapist be the same as you’d seen them to be on TV. You were glad he was a man. You felt more comfortable. You thought he might understand you better. He was relaxed, reclining in his brown leather bound armchair. This put you at ease too. He was middle aged with a kind, calm demeanour. His face wore a constant friendly, inviting expression. A slight smile given away by his eyes, wrinkled around the edges. You felt he was trusting you. You felt he wanted to know you, that he wouldn’t forget you after you walked out the door. You wanted to return the trust.
“Well, what is it you wanna know?” you had decided before coming to ask as many questions as you could. This wasn’t an interview.
“I want to know whatever it is that you want me to know, I want you to feel comfortable with me. If anything is bothering you at all, you can tell me,” this answer may have been another cliché but you liked the idea of having someone completely impartial to listen to you.
“Well, it wasn‘t my idea to come here. I‘m not sure there’s anything wrong with me that I even need to come here,” you watched him watching you. You made an accidental eye contact and broke it immediately. You began looking around the room as he addressed your last statement.
“Sometimes it‘s good to just talk. Maybe you just want to come here for a few weeks and have a chat, we can talk about whatever it is you feel like,”
The room had a homely feel to it. Everything had it’s place. Like a grandparents’ house where some of the rooms are never used, only kept clean. The walls were eggshell white, bordered by dark brown varnished wood. With it being winter, the thin curtains were drawn against the night. In each corner of the room a lamp was light. Beside the couch you sat on was another lamp. These lights were a dull white however. Perhaps power-saving. Neutral. Draining rather than giving, you thought. You looked back to your therapist. You were 16.
“OK then, I‘m 16, I‘m in school in fourth year. I have a mother and a father. I have twin sisters that are 6. My parents split up last year and I guess that‘s why I’m here. My parents hear it‘s all the rage when your family becomes a statistic,” you were well versed in this kind of response to the same inane questions. Questions your aunts and uncles would ask you. Questions to which there was no real answer; more a script that’s been added to and edited along the way.
“You consider your family a statistic?” You didn’t, you simply said these things; reading from the script again. His questions and your answers, back and forth. You could be pedantic on this subject. For you, it leant a degree of normalcy to the dissolution of the neutral family of which you were once a part; now apart. You would be facetious. What you thought and how you thought. You were a teenager but you would try to be adult and adults, as far as you could see, dealt in statistics. Rationale and logic, propped by a stat. Whatever gave it precedence to appear in print on paper. Gray and neutral in their mature middling.
You found that he would treat you how you wanted from the start. You never got a lecture. You never got advice unless you asked for it. Simply answers to questions and questions to answers. The panic and the anger you felt fell away over the weeks you spent with him. The trust between the two of you grew over time. You had found someone to talk to throughout the tension and confusion of familial breakdown. He listened as you related stories of the lead up to and eventual dissection of that which you once thought so important; that which you had always feared. You remembered holidays where no one spoke. You remembered strange details like the way the rays of the sun always looked so different everywhere you went or how your sisters cried on the plane and how you wondered why they were brought when still so young. You spoke of how your mother seemed happier on those trips and how you came to realise you were going on a lot of these holidays just so she could be happy. You wondered aloud, in that safe room called a therapists office, whether your mother had made these same realisations. You remembered your reflection in numerous mirrors. You remembered feeling older the more your parents fought. He helped you understand and move on and when you eventually stopped going and said goodbye, you could acknowledge this. When you did say goodbye, you had indeed grown up. You were confident. Mature. You had stopped scrambling.

You close your book. You hadn’t been reading, your glazed eyes moving over groups of meaningless letters. The words had been moving through the back of your mind and entering that empty expanse. On your phone there are no missed calls and no received messages. You stare at the reflection of your face in the glass sheen of the front of the phone. Your eyes look deep, dilated and dark. Bristles under your chin show your growing disregard. Bags under your eyes show your dawning age. Your ears. Your hair. You nose. Your forehead. All an expression of you and your vacancy.
You dial your fathers number. His number is saved in the phone’s memory but you make the point of punching in the numbers. You know there will be no answer, that it may not even ring. Before his death you would never have rang him. He rang you around once a month to make small conversation and be involved in your life. You didn’t always answer.
There is no ring and it goes straight to his voicemail. You thought hearing his voice might let you feel his loss. It doesn’t. You remain outside the reality of the situation. You are dislocated and only looking in. As your deceased father’s voice is speaking to you, you try to remember the last time the two of you spoke, but your memory is foggy. There is a fine mist clouding any thoughts of your father, blocking any supposed emotion. The voice sounds foreign. A doppelganger. Like the dream, your fathers face is blurred when you try to picture it. You know you should have regrets and a repressed sadness, but all you feel is a hollow emptiness. That last dinner flashes in your mind again.
“18. The age of majority,” Hi, you’ve reached…
His disembodied voice is speaking to you and you can’t fathom the fact that this isn’t him. That it never will be again.
“Away from the big smoke…” I can’t currently come to the phone…
That he is in a box somewhere in Dublin, where you are now headed.
“I‘m thinking of moving away…” but if you just leave a message; I’ll call you back.
You ring and hang up a few more times just to hear his voice. It’s a music that’s lost.

“I like how it‘s written in the second person,” her voice breaks your uneasy reverie.
“You don‘t see that too often,” you lean forward to look back at her. She is relaxed in her posture. Her portrait framed between the split in the seats. That languid smile on her lips. Her bouquet is the air you’re breathing again. Her eyes seem to be looking slightly up at you.
“I’ve read that book myself,” she is still smiling as she continues a conversation you have yet to enter. She seems insouciant with you staring so; observing.
“I’ve actually read it a few times,” she continues, “just one of those books,” you can see an anxiety now dawning across her features, which prompts you to respond.
“Me too,” you start, trying to be light-hearted, “more times than I care to think of,” you are ignoring the reasons for your being on this bus.
“I always end up thinking in the second person by the time I finish it,” she continues, “it gives my inner-monologue a strange theme,” you hadn’t noticed you think to yourself.
There is a pause and an opulent breath before either of you talk again. For the first time on the journey you started hours ago, you are not thinking of why or where or who or the past or what’s to come or any emotion or any troubles. You simply are.
She leads the conversation, asking you about college and telling you she’ll be attending in the next year. She asks you simple questions and you give her the equal answers. The discussion is calming and gentle and dances over innocuous subjects. You are both comfortable with each other and the time passes the journey.
As the bus approaches a tunnel she grabs your arm excitedly and tells you to hold your breath until you’ve come through the other side and then make a wish. You laugh, finding her spontaneity refreshing. The bus driver announces your arrival in Dublin as you leave the tunnel. Without considering the possible rejection and buoyed by her enthusiasm you ask if she’d like to go for a drink somewhere.
“I know a place right beside the stop,” she says, exhaling her breath in your face.

Outside the window, beyond your reflection, Dublin’s person has made her appearance. Buildings of varying red and ochre lean over the pathways busy in shapes and sizes. Time and age left in the footprints still being over-shod. A skyline undecided in it’s height foregrounds empty cranes and unfinished construction.
The bus moves past monuments and plaques and old bullet holes in older pillars. Yellow lights on roofs of cars weave past as the bus dominates the thin lanes of traffic. Tourists signal and point and pose and flash their cameras. Beggars beg. Sellers sell.
The shimmer of the quayside floats across the window your face stares out of, rippling your reflection and smashing it like a rock on water. You’re blinking your eyes dry when she passes you on her way to the front and exit. You follow instinctively and gesture ladies first.
Directly off the bus you are again staring at your reflection in a shop window. You smile at yourself.
You check your watch. You see the clock ticking.
You breath the air.
You hear the hammers banging.